Yeast people,
I am an engineer in a physics lab at U.C. Irvine and a homebrewer. I suspect
you will get an occasional question from us brewers. Certainly you will from
me. I am just ignorant enough to wonder about these things.
In brewing we use different kinds of yeast to make ales, lagers, stouts, wine
and whatever, these are of course different from the bread yeast as well.
There are also different names for the yeasts in those groups that are reported
to give different flavors, ie: this lager yeast is more aromatic, that lager
yeast is more bitter and so on.
I would like to know what it is about the yeast that make them different in
these subtle ways and how they break down the sugars that would make them
effect the beer in such ways. Please I am more physics oriented than biology
or chemistry, if you could slant you answers that way I would appreciate it.
BTW could you please describe what exactly is a yeast?
Thanks for any help,
Dave Parsons